'Fandango at the Wall' film, shot in Tijuana, San Diego and Veracruz, to debut on HBO

‘Fandango at the Wall’ film, shot in Tijuana, San Diego and Veracruz, to debut on HBO

Arturo O’Farrill (right) and Jorge Castillo hug after the 2018 "Fandango at the Wall" concert.

The documentary, executive produced by Quincy Jones and Carlos Santana, premieres on HBO Latino and will have five subsequent broadcasts

San Diego Union-Tribune

Sept. 24, 2020 2:34 PM PT

The coronavirus pandemic has slowed and changed the trajectory of the borders-leaping music documentary “Fandango at the Wall,” which features a 2018 concert at the U.S.-Mexico border. The film, whose March 12 opening night at the 27th annual San Diego Latino Film Festival was postponed — along with the festival itself — will have its belated debut Friday at 8 p.m. when it premieres on HBO Latino and streams on HBO Max.

The 93-minute documentary was shot in Tijuana, San Diego and the Mexican port city of Veracruz. It was inspired by the now 13-year-old Fandango Fronterizo festival, which is held concurrently on the Tijuana side of the U.S.-Mexico border and at San Diego’s adjacent Friendship Park.

The festival was founded by Jorge Castillo, a retired Chula Vista librarian who now lives in Tijuana. Fandango Fronterizo celebrates son jarocho, a 300-year-old string music tradition from Veracruz that fuses indigenous Mexican, Spanish and African styles. The festival’s 2018 edition was expanded with the addition of Grammy Award-winning Latin Jazz band leader Arturo O’Farrill and his Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, plus guest musicians from Mexico, the U.S. and the Middle East.

“We want to not only end political borders, but the borders between different musics, races and philosophies that we carry between ourselves,” Castillo said in a March Union-Tribune interview.

Directed by London native Varda Bar-Kar, “Fandango at the Border” was executive-produced by music legend Quincy Jones, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young, best-selling author Kabir Sehgal and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Carlos Santana, a former Tijuana resident.

The film is the latest manifestation of the 2018 concert, which also yielded the two-CD album, “Fandango at the Wall: A Soundtrack for the United States, Mexico and Beyond,” and a subsequent book and CD, “Fandango at the Wall: Creating Harmony Between the United States and Mexico.”

Friday’s debut airing of “Fandango at the Wall” on HBO Latino will be followed by repeat showings on the same channel at 8:30 a.m. on Sunday, 11:15 p.m. on Tuesday, 12:35 pm. on Oct. 10, 8 p.m. on Oct. 15 and 4:55 p.m. on Oct. 21.

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George Varga

San Diego Union-Tribune music critic George Varga began drumming in rock bands at 12 and writing professionally about music at 15. A Louisiana native who grew up mostly in Germany, Varga has earned three Pulitzer Prize nominations for his writing at the U-T and is a voting member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to providing live coverage of the Grammy Awards and festivals from Coachella and KAABOO to the 1994 edition of Woodstock, he has interviewed everyone from Miles Davis, Britney Spears and (over a game of chess) Ray Charles to Willie Nelson, Kanye West and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis. A triple first prize-winner for criticism and arts writing at the 2022 San Diego Press Club awards and a first prize-winner at the 2022 San Diego Society of Professional Journalists awards, Varga is also a contributing writer for Jazz Times magazine and has written for Billboard, Spin and other publications. After attending San Diego City College and San Diego State University, he created and taught the 2002 UC San Diego Extension course, “Jazz in a Post-Ken-Burns World.” Varga has written liner notes for more than a dozen albums, including by jazz sax greats James Moody and Michael Brecker, and contributed two chapters to the book, “Dylan: Disc By Disc.”